Abstract

Social character (Fromm,1942; Fromm&Maccoby, 1996) is a character that is unique to a certain society at a specific geographical location. Although unique, it has similarities and differences in comparison to other societies. There have not been many studies on the construction of social character in Indonesian context. This research aims to construct a model to be used in identifying the actors, which contributes to the construction of social character in a city. The focus on one certain society, which is Chinese Indonesian society in P city, is only for pragmatic reason. To focus on more than one society would be very complex. This is an ethnographic research that is conducted through studying artifacts and documents, as well as interviews and field observations. The data gathering process is conducted through three phases from 2012 to 2013. It is analyzed with Actor Network Theory, with descriptions of how common activities, habits and procedures endured and joined together. The result revealed four main key actors, as well as sub---actors. The key actors are environmental condition, culture related to environmental condition, society groups and cultural values. In addition, the role of society group at funeral rites is one of the important sub---actors in understanding their culture. This model on identifying actors has a potentiality to be used as a reference to understand the construction of social character of a particular group or society in a city